LOVE  and  ETHICS 


I,OVK 

and   KTHICS 

By 

ELLEN  KEY 

Author 
Child." 

of  "  The  Century  of  the 
"  Love  and  Marriage,"  etc. 

i  > 

NEW  YORK 

B. 

W.    HUEBSCH 

1911 

Ck)pyright,  1911, 
By  B.  W.  HUEBSCH 


All  rights  reserved 


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••   •  •  -  •  i  •  r    *  ••  • 


♦  •. 


PRINTED   IN   U.    S.    A. 


>    J  J  J   J     J 


NOTE  U  ^ 


ELLEN  KEY'S  startling  views  on 
the  marriage  relation  in  ''Love  and 
Marriage"  imply  far  more  than  a 
refusal  to  accept  the  sanctified,  time-hon- 
ored beliefs  held  by  the  majority  to-day. 
The  heat  of  the  arguments  provoked  by 
her  bold  contentions  often  blinds  her  ad- 
versaries to  the  basic  moral  good  in  her 
creed.  She  elucidates  some  of  the  most 
difficult  problems  in  eugenics  by  showing 
how  the  right  marriage  relation,  founded 
on  a  higher  moral  standard  in  the  sex  re- 
lation, will  make  woman  more  capable 
of  doing  her  share  in  the  great  work, of 
social  reconstruction.' 

Valuable  suggestions  for  the  child-cul- 
ture of  the  future  are  offered  when  she 
insists  upon  a  change  in  the  conditions 
which   hamper   woman   in    her    highest 

work  as  a  mother,  and  rob  children  of  a 

5 

229434 


.  :  •:  0*.  •'•':•  •    •  -  "'":     Note 
:.:  I- :/:•.-"   ::.o!;-.  .• 

mother's  care.  Love  has  assumed  a  deep- 
er aspect  since  woman's  powers  have  been 
liberated,  hence  we  must  strive  for  a  high- 
er perfection  in  the  relation  of  the  sexes. 
In  ''Love  and  Ethics"  she  deals  with 
sex  problems  with  the  courage  and  the 
purity  of  mind  which  such  themes  de- 
mand, and  she  challenges  the  permanence 
of  current  ideals  against  the  law  of  life 
which  means  change  and  growth.  We 
must  anticipate  the  necessity  of  establish- 
ing a  new  standard  of  moral  values  if 
present-day  social  wrongs  and  abuses  are 
to  be  remedied.  Ellen  Key  points  the 
way  to  these  higher  values,  without  de- 
manding that  her  revolutionary  ideas  of 
reform  be  translated  into  immediate  ac- 
tion. Conditions  are  not  ripe  for  the  rad- 
ical changes  she  suggests.  A  gradual 
transformation  of  moral  values  must  lead 
the  way  to  a  better  future,  founded  on  a 
higher  conception  of  love. 

A.  K.  B. 


LOVE  AND  ETHICS 

IN  love,  in  which  the  happiness  of  the 
individual  and  the  well-being  of 
society  so  frequently  conflict,  the 
present  conception  of  duty  demands  the 
unconditional  sacrifice  of  the  individual 
to  society.  All  the  state  needs,  we  are 
told,  is  healthy  fathers  and  mothers,  the 
certainty  of  the  permanent  union  of  the 
parents  to  secure  the  education  of  their 
progeny.  Whenever  the  happiness  of  the 
individual  interferes  with  this  require- 
ment, the  individual  must  be  sacrificed. 
That  this  entails  suffering  upon  him  is  no 
reason  for  loosening  the  marriage  bond, 
and  certainly  not  so  long  as  the  majority 
of  parents  are  agreed  that  children  are 
best  cared  for  in  the  family.  Therefore, 
it  is  said,  the  state  is  not  interested  in  any 

7 


8  Love  and  Ethics 

change  in  marriage  forms.  To  facilitate 
divorce  would  not  remove  the  causes  of 
the  discords  that  arise  whenever  human 
beings  live  in  close  union.  Even  if  the 
present  form  of  marriage  does  not  meet 
the  demands  of  the  most  highly  developed 
types  of  men  and  women,  we  must  accept 
the  status  that  benefits  society  as  a  whole 
when  confronted  with  the  choice  between 
an  innovation  that  would  benefit  the  few 
but  be  harmful  to  the  many  and  the  exist- 
ing order  that  brings  suffering  to  the  few 
but  benefits  the  collectivity.  At  the  pres- 
ent time  easy  divorce  would  only  slacken 
the  marriage  tie  by  making  for  disinte- 
gration. The  destruction  of  the  family, 
hence  of  the  nation,  would  be  the  result. 
Accordingly,  for  love  to  demand  happi- 
ness is  downright  rebellion  against  the 
welfare  of  the  state.  History,  ethnog- 
raphy, and  nature  do  not  bear  out  the 
theory  that  happiness  is  to  be  achieved 
by   individualism   in   love.      The   lesson 


Love  and  Ethics  9 

they  teach  is  that  of  quiet  self-denial  and 
courageous  fulfilment  of  duty.  As  soon  as 
children  come,  it  is  said,  the  parents'  de- 
mands for  their  own  happiness  must  cease. 
If  they  do  not,  nature,  in  obedience  to  her 
laws,  will  punish  them  for  the  neglect  of 
their  duty  through  the  children. 

The  great  error  in  this  theory  of  duty, 
not  only  as  it  affects  love  but  even  all 
other  human  relations,  is  the  notion  that 
society  is  necessarily  benefited  by  the  sac- 
rifice of  the  individual.  And  the  evidence 
adduced  to  prove  this  theory  is  equally 
false.  What  history  and  ethnography 
show  is  but  the  workings  of  what  we  call 
human  nature,  a  very  changing  phenom- 
enon varying  with  time, /nationality,  and 
climate.  They  show  that  what  * ' nature' ' 
commands  on  the  one  hand  she  forbids 
on  the  other,  that  what  is  denied  her  in 
one  way  she  exacts  in  another  way.  In 
France,  for  example,  the  arguments  ad- 
vanced to-day  against  divorce   are   that 


10  Love  and  Ethics 

'^ remarriage  is  against  nature,"  that  **a 
woman  is  never  a  true  mother  outside  the 
family,"  that  the  family  does  not  depend 
upon  what  our  reason  tells  us,  but  upon 
''natural  laws"  proved  by  sociology  and 
biology.  Such  arguments  make  it  diffi- 
cult to  forget  the  ''natural  law"  that  has 
made  adultery  the  shadow  of  indissoluble 
marriage,  especially  in  France.  Every 
defence  of  marriage  confirms  Lassalle's 
words,  that  the  art  of  petty  diplomatic 
souls  consists  in  lying  away  the  truth  and 
denying  what  is.  One  would  suppose,  on 
hearing  these  arguments,  that  those  who 
attack  marriage  were  trying  to  destroy  a 
beautiful  idyl.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
horrors  of  the  present  system  are  such 
that  what  we  should  do  is  compare  them 
with  the  possible  dangers  of  a  new  system 
and  see  which  are  to  be  dreaded  the  more. 
Even  if  the  social  conditions  to-day  were 
not  the  cause  of  much  impurity  and  un- 
happiness,  the  question  is  not,  "Are  mod- 


Love  and  Ethics  11 

ern  marriages  good  enough  for  the  needs 
of  society?"  The  question  is,  ''How  can 
we  find  a  more  efficient  ethical  code  than 
the  present  one  for  improving  the  spe- 
cies?" 

The  basic  idea  of '  'Love  and  Marriage' '  ^ 
was  not  that  the  individual  must  obtain  the 
highest  mea^U7X  of  happiness  in  the  love  re" 
lationj  but  that  society  must  be  so  adjusted 
as  to  7nake  the  happiness  of  the  individual 
subserve  the  betterment  of  the  species. 

In  "Love  and  Marriage"  I  pointed  out 
that  those  who  insist  on  monogamy,  that 
is,  a  lifelong  love  relation,  as  the  only 
moral  relationship  between  the  sexes  dis- 
regard the  inevitable  consequence  of  such 
an  ethical  standard,  namely,  the  waste  of  A 
a  large  amount  of  splendid  life  energy 
which  if  utilized  would  produce  fine  off- 
spring and  so  aid  in  the  improvement  of 
the  race;  while  the  worse  elements  of  so- 
ciety would  not  be  deterred  by  any  ethical 
principle  from   propagating  their  kind. 


12  Love  and  Ethics 

Such  high-strung  idealism  would  produce 
the  same  results  as  the  convents  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  and,  under  present  social 
conditions,  this  standard  of  morality- 
would  hinder  the  improvement  of  the 
species,  although  the  trend  of  evolution  is 
unmistakably  toward  real  unity  of  love 
as  the  final  goal,  and  although  unity  of 
the  soul  and  the  senses  can  already  be 
laid  down  as  the  condition  of  true  chastity 
in  the  union  of  the  sexes  in  or  out  of  mar- 
riage. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  good  of 
the  species,  the  legal  and  ecclesiastical 
form  of  morality  cannot  hold  its  ground 
against  the  most  highly  developed  sex 
consciousness  of  to-day  and  its  ethics. 
Morality  seeks  new  standards  in  itself  as 
well  as  in  the  laws  governing  the  condi- 
tions that  make  for  the  improvement  of 
the  race,  laws  which  science  has  already 
discovered,  or,  with  ever-increasing  zeal, 
is  seeking  to  discover.     These  laws  and 


Love  and  Ethics  13 

this  consciousness,  I  pointed  out  in  my 
previous  work,  may  sometimes  conflict. 
Sex  idealism,  for  example,  holds  that  the 
sole  sanction  for  parenthood  is  love.  The 
eugenists  point  to  the  fact  that  many 
fine  children  spring  from  mothers  that 
never  loved  the  fathers  of  those  children. 
Sex  idealism  insists  on  unity  of  love.  The 
eugenists  show  that  fidelity  is  responsible 
for  a  great  deal  of  unproductiveness  and 
in  so  far  is  a  waste  to  the  species, 
while  infidelity  has  been  productive  of 
much  good  to  the  species.  Sex  idealism 
contends  that  those  parents  are  the  best 
whose  love  is  most  steadfast.  The  eugen- 
ists maintain  that  the  most  important 
thing  for  humanity  is  that  those  men 
and  women  should  unite  for  parenthood 
who  are  best  equipped  for  it,  whether 
with  or  without  love,  with  or  without 
marriage.  They  cite  as  examples  the 
nations  that  have  had  a  long,  vigorous 
existence,  although  love  played  no  part 


14  Love  and  Ethics 

in  the  contraction  of  their  marriages. 
Sex  idealism  replies  by  saying  that  the 
maintenance  of  a  nation  is  one  thing, 
the  elevation  of  the  soul  another.  Na- 
tions may  exist  by  virtue  of  their  ignoble 
qualities  as  well  as  their  noble  qualities. 
The  species  can  be  elevated  only  by  erad- 
icating inherited  savage  and  animal  traits 
through  selection. 

All  other  problems  of  life  must  be  re- 
garded from  this  one  point  of  view,  the 
elevation  of  the  species.  Are  the  chil- 
dren of  the  upstart  millionaire  as  a  rule 
strong,  beautiful,  and  healthy?  If  not, 
then  the  mad  chase  after  wealth  must  be 
condemned  not  only  as  an  indirect  but  as 
a  direct  hindrance  to  the  improvement  of 
the  race.  If  men  or  women  who  are  fit 
for  parenthood  but  not  for  love  suffer 
through  celibacy  and  could  lead  a  fuller 
life  if  allowed  to  present  fine  children  to 
society;  or  even  if  some  men  or  women 
are  fit  for  love  but  not  for  a  single  life- 


Love  and  Ethics  15 

long  love,  then  the  one-love  idealist  has 
no  more  right  to  impose  his  standard  of 
love  upon  them  than  they  have  to  im- 
pose their  standard  upon  him. 

That,  however,  is  just  what  is  being 
attempted,  especially  among  those  of  our 
youth  who  recognize  no  idealism  other 
than  their  own.  Even  our  young  ''free- 
thinkers' '  do  not  regard  the  sex  question 
with  a  free,  open  mind.  They  seem  to 
think  there  are  only  two  possibilities, 
either  to  be  a  slave  to  desire  or  a  slave  to 
duty.  And  the  rest  ''plead  for  chains 
and  pray  for  barriers."  They  look  up 
timetables,  sailing  dates,  and  Cook's 
tours  and  take  out  passports  for  safety. 
Then  where  is  the  courage  that  goes 
ahead  on  its  own  responsibility  and  at  its 
own  peril  opens  up  new  paths  and  tries  to 
discover  new  countries?  The  young  gen- 
eration, even  the  Lelf -styled  "truth  seek- 
ers," complain  of  the  inconsistency,  the 
contradictoriness  in  the  treatment  of  this 


16  Love  and  Ethics 

subject,  forgetting  that  in  love  life  itself 
assumes  its  most  contradictory  form.  Do 
they  not  know  that  life  is  a  living  thing 
and  therefore  incalculable,  that  life  is  not' 
a  hard  and  fast  fact,  but  a  growth  with 
undivined  possibilities,  that  it  leads  us 
and  all  other  creatures  along  mysterious 
paths  and  so  discloses  things  we  never 
dreamed  of  in  our  philosophy?  Have 
they  no  glimmering  that  life  often  holds 
in  store  unexpected  destinies,  marvellous 
experiences,  blossoms  of  our  own  being 
and  other  beings  that  we  shall  never  fore- 
see? Do  they  not  feel  that  the  beauty  of 
life  is  its  very  incalculableness;  that 
greatness  in  life  is  to  rise  to  heights 
through  all  of  life's  uncertainties? 

If  we  only  perceived  this,  we  should 
never  demand  a  fixed  ideal,  no  matter 
how  lofty.  The  man  who  knew  that  the 
next  day  his  ideal  would  become  the  gen- 
eral, established  ideal  would  instantly  de- 
stroy it,  so  gruesome  is  the  thought  that 


Love  and  Ethics  17 

infinite  life  should  thenceforth  proceed 
according  to  a  single  model. 

Idealism,  we  should  then  perceive,  may 
signify  only  one  thing — that  each  person 
values  his  ideal  so  highly  that  he  is  will-  ' 
ing  to  live  and  die  for  it,  even  though  to 
others  it  may  seem  unimportant,  foolish, 
or  even  shameful. 

He  is  an  idealist  who  swings  a  heavy 
hammer  and  rams  into  place  the  stones 
of  the  concept  of  duty,  thereby  paving  a 
smooth  road  for  others  to  travel.  But 
either  side  of  the  road  stretches  the  earth, 
which  bears  life  from  the  poles   to  the  | 

equator,  life  with  its  countless  shades  of  I 

customs  and  temperaments.  To  think  of 
insisting  upon  a  great  lifelong  love  as  the 
sole  moral  standard  for  this  varied  life! 

He  who  so  insists  has  never  allowed  his 
thoughts  to  stray  beyond  the  narrow  cir- 
cle prescribed  by  his  like-minded  neigh- 
bors. He  forgets  that  an  ideal,  a  thing 
incomprehensible    to    the    majority,     is 


18  Love  and  Ethics 

bound  to  be  entirely  set  aside  if  it  is 
forced  upon  mankind  as  absolute. 

To  proclaim  a  belief  that  flows  from 
one's  own  spiritual  state  is  very  different 
from  demanding  that  same  spiritual  state 
in  others.  When  a  man  proclaims  his 
belief  by  his  teachings  or  his  life,  he  con- 
tributes to  the  spread  of  a  state  of  soul 
like  his  own;  others  are  influenced  to  pat- 
tern their  spiritual  self -culture  and  their 
self -given  laws  of  life  upon  his.  But  hav- 
ing proclaimed  himself  subjectively,  his 
task  is  done. 

If  all  social  problems,  customs,  usages, 
and  pleasures  were  to  be  measured  by 
their  effect  upon  the  human  race,  we 
should  perhaps  arrive  at  that  absolute 
ethical  standard  which  is  now  lacking. 
But  all  this  must  first  be  investigated. 
In  Europe  monogamy  is  established  as 
the  absolute  moral  law,  the  necessary 
condition  for  the  maintenance  and  health 
of  the  nations.     But  among  such  hardy 


Love  and  Ethics  19 

nations  as  the  modern  Japanese  and  the 
ancient  Hebrews  we  find  concubinage  an 
institution  sanctioned  by  law  and  custom. 
A  nation  in  which  marriages  are  con- 
tracted only  from  deep  personal  love  is  at 
a  great  disadvantage  as  against  other  na- 
tions and  must  perish,  because  deep  per- 
sonal love  is  still  an  exception  for  which 
so  high  a  price  must  be  paid  that  he  who 
has  paid  it  does  not  possess  the  courage  to 
impose  it  as  an  ethical  demand  on  others. 
For  this  and  many  other  reasons  I 
maintained  in  ''Love  and  Marriage"  that 
the  modern  sex  problem  consists  in  find- 
ing the  proper  equilibrium  between,  on  v^ 
the  one  hand,  the  requirements  for  the 
improvement  of  the  species  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  increased  demands  of  the 
individual  to  be  happy  in  love;  whereas 
formerly  the  problem  was  only  between 
society's  demands  for  fixed  marriage 
forms  and  the  individual's  demands  to 
satisfy  his  sex  life  in  any  form.     The  sex 


i*.       20  Love  and  Ethics 

ethics  that  proceeds  from  this  new  equi- 
librium will  be  the  only  true  ethics.  It 
will  efifect  an  upliftment  of  life  in  both 
the  species  and  the  individual. 

The  problem  of  sex,  as  I  have  also 
pointed  out  in  ''Love  and  Marriage,"  is 
the  problem  of  life,  it  is  the  problem  of 
society's  happiness,  in  comparison  with 
which  all  other  problems  sink  into  insig- 
nificance. Education,  every  cultural  ef- 
fort in  intellectual  and  religious  matters 
will  remain  superficial  until  we  regard  as 
the  main  question,  that  which  determines 
all  other  cultural  schemes,  the  elevation 
of  the  human  race.  We  must  strive  for 
the  elevation  of  the  human  race  not  only 
as  has  been  done  heretofore  through  the 
self-improvement  of  the  individuals  in 
each  generation,  but  through  their  selec- 
tive instinct,  which  as  it  develops  in  in- 
sight will  enable  them  the  better  to  rec- 
ognize the  conditions  that  determine  the 
propagation  of  the  species. 


Love  and  Ethics  21 

However,  as  against  the  one-sided  point 
of  view  of  race-culture,  I  have  in  ''Love 

and  Marriage"  stated  the  hypothesis  that 
in  love  humanity  has  found  the  form  of 
selection  most  conducive  to  the  ennoblement 
of  the  species.  Yet  the  earnest  truth- 
seeker  cannot  possibly  think  of  setting  up 
his  unproved  hypothesis  as  an  irrefragable 
principle.  All  I  pled  for  was  greater 
freedom  in  love,  that  we  might  have  the 
opportunity  of  observing  its  effect.  I 
also  urged  that  in  the  study  of  the  influ- 
ences of  heredity  more  attention  be  paid 
to  the  effect  of  love.  To  gain  an  ever 
clearer  insight  into  the  combinations  that 
transmit  ancestral  traits  and  so  be  better 
able  to  discover  the  laws  of  selection  by 
which  life  in  all  its  aspects  ascends  to 
higher  levels;  to  make  these  laws  morally 
binding,  so  that  selection  should  secure 
the  best  qualities  and  eradicate  the  worst 
— this  is  indeed  the  universal  aim  of  evo- 
lution. 


22  Love  and  Ethics 

Even  those  who  are  profoundly  con- 
vinced of  the  importance  of  the  one-love 
form  as  a  factor  in  evolution  must  admit 
that  there  are  many  other  factors  be- 
sides, which  no  idealistic  fanaticism  can 
conjure  away  from  the  process  of  evolu- 
tion. The  life  force  that  has  created  out 
of  two  cells  and  two  cell-souls  our  com- 
plex being  and  given  rise  to  the  manifold 
marriage  forms  and  ideals  of  love  that 
now  determine  the  species  is  merely  the 
last  link  in  a  chain  of  evolution  begin- 
ning billions  of  years  ago.  And  since  we 
know  that  this  evolution  of  love  was  ef- 
fected without  any  predetermined  ideal 
type,  there  is  no  good  reason  to  doubt 
that  Eros  will  continue  to  mould  a  cos- 
mos out  of  the  existing  chaos  of  sex  rela- 
tions without  imposing  upon  the  present 
as  an  ethical  norm  the  ideal  type  of 
which  we  are  now  beginning  to  have  a 
dawning  perception.  On  the  other  hand 
those  who  think  that  the  whole  matter 


Love  and  Ethics  23 

can  be  left  to  the  ^^  natural  instincts"  or 
to  the  gratification  of  the  senses,  or  those 
who  believe  that  it  can  be  left  to  the  di- 
vine instinct  for  what  is  good  and  right, 
forget  that  man's  own  power  to  create 
ideals  has  long  been  a  factor  in  evolution, 
and  that  the  only  question  at  present  is, 
''How  can  this  force  be  made  an  agent 
for  good  in  evolution?" 

By  bending  our  efforts  to  the  improve- 
ment of  the  race  we  shall,  as  I  explained 
in  ''Love  and  Marriage,"  build  a  bridge    ,/ 
to  lead  from  the  present  chaos  in  love    / 
toward  the  one  personal   love  relation. 
This,  too,  is  the  only  way  in  which  love 
can   be   rid   of  its    irrational   character,    ^^ 
which  Goethe  described  by  saying  that  in 
love  everything  is  a  hazard,  because  every- 
thing depends  upon  chance.     All  of  this, 
however,  is  only  another  name  for  undis- 
covered laws.     Some  day  we  shall  reach  a 
point  where  the  erotic   discord   between 
the  soul  and  the  senses  physically  and  the 


24  Love  and  Ethics 

discord  between  several  persons  psychic- 
ally will  be  impossible,  for  it  is  the  desire 
of  every  soul  to  experience  the  highest 
happiness.  And  the  highest  happiness 
can  be  attained  only  through  the  large 
feelings,  which  by  psychologic  necessity 
exclude  the  many  small  ones.  But  the 
road  still  to  be  traversed  is  very  long, 
and  meanwhile  there  are  pure  souls  that 
have  loved  more  than  once,  because,  hav- 
ing looked  in  vain  for  the  complete  em- 
bodiment of  their  ideal  in  one  individual, 
they  have  found  one  side  of  it  in  one 
person,  another  side  in  another  person. 
There  are  pure  souls,  who  upon  discover- 
ing a  new  soul  mate  can  forget  their  pre- 
vious experiences  as  if  they  had  never  oc- 
curred; other  pure  souls  there  are  who, 
because  they  have  erred  in  their  great 
love,  have  lost  their  capacity  for  further 
experiences. 

"Love  and  Marriage"  was  addressed  to 
those  of  our  youth  who  have  consecrated 


Love  and  Ethics  25 

themselves  with  new  devotion  to  guard- 
ing the  gift  of  life,  those,  therefore,  who 
know  that  the  ethical  law  is  not  written 
upon  tablets  of  stone,  but  upon  tablets  of 
flesh  and  blood,  who  feel  that  their  own 
noble  happiness  in  love  is  a  service  to  life, 
surpassing  in  devotion  every  service  to 
God.  But  the  question  where  freedom  of 
love  ends  and  the  right  of  the  new  gen- 
eration begins  is  a  question  which  they, 
too,  must  decide. 

Since  we  still  know  so  little  of  the  con- 
ditions that  make  for  the  best  offspring 
physically  as  well  as  psychically,  the  faith 
of  the  idealist  in  the  importance  of  love 
cannot  obtain  greater  social  concessions 
to  love  than  those  which  will  not  endan- 
ger the  certainty  of  evolution.     Of  all 

social  concessions  to  be  demanded  the 
most  essential  is  that  the  standard  by 
which  the  morality  of  parenthood  is 
measured  should  be,  not  the  marriage  rite 
but  the  will  of  two  human  beings  to  as» 


vv 


26  Love  and  Ethics 

sume  the  responsibility  for  their  children, 
not  the  legitimacy  of  the  children  but  the 
kind  of  children  they  are.  The  second 
social  concession  to  be  insisted  upon  is 
that  the  dissolution  of  marriage  should 
be  made  dependent  upon  the  will  of  one 
of  the  married  pair,  and  that  the  man  and 
woman  should  have  equal  marital  rights. 
While  society,  therefore,  has  until  now 
been  satisfied  if  husband  and  wife  merely 
continued  to  live  together,  no  matter 
under  what  adverse  circumstances,  and 
reared  children  no  matter  how  bad,  the 
new  conception  of  duty  will  aid  in  the 
elevation  of  life.  For  these  new  princi- 
ples have  all  the  prerequisites  to  an  or- 
ganic growth  of  duty  combined  with  hap- 
piness, of  responsibility  combined  with 
rights,  as  well  as  the  prerequisites  to  the 
organic  union  of  duty,  happiness,  respon- 
sibility, and  rights  with  all  the  other  re- 
ligious, moral,  and  economic  ideals  that 
each  day  are  coming  to  be  more  generally 


Love  and  Ethics  27 

prevalent.  Moreover,  these  principles  can 
be  adapted  even  now  to  existing  condi- 
tions in  so  far  as  such  adaptation  is  neces- 
sary for  the  cooperation  of  souls  and  the 
universalization  of  customs,  so  that  those 
on  a  lower  level  would  be  educated  by 
the  more  advanced. 

In  society  at  large,  as  in  the  individual, 
the  attainment,  through  every  new  form, 
of  a  fuller  development  of  p(nver,  a  richer 
variety,  and,  at  the  same  time,  a  com- 
pleter unity,  signifies  an  upward  evolu- 
tion. The  forces  of  the  spiritual  life  that 
now  radiate  in  two  different  directions 
would  be  focussed  were  society  to  protect 
all  children  alike  but  allow  individuals  to 
protect  their  love.  The  feeling  of  re- 
sponsibility for  the  child's  original  char- 
acter is  weakened  by  the  current  concep- 
tion of  legitimacy,  and  for  the  child's 
bringing  up  by  the  current  conception  of 
illegitimacy. 

That  endeavor  to  elevate  love  to  higher 


28  Love  and  Ethics 

levels,  the  impulse  by  which  love  lives 
and  bestows  happiness,  while  its  cessation 
is  love's  death — that  endeavor  will  in- 
crease in  infinite  measure  as  soon  as  free- 
dom of  divorce  puts  an  end  to  the  present 
certainty  in  marriage.  The  fact  that  in 
some  free  unions  also  love  dies,  as  is  fre- 
quently adduced  in  controversion,  proves 
nothing  against  this  possibility  of  a  finer 
love  through  free  divorce.  Often  the 
very  thing  that  dissolves  free  unions  is  so- 
ciety's persecution  of  those  who  live  in 
free  unions.  The  objection  is  untenable 
that  even  at  present  the  law  puts  only 
the  slightest  obstacles  in  the  way  of  di- 
vorce, that  delicacy  of  feeling,  a  tender 
conscience,  sympathy,  and  similar  spirit- 
ual states  usually  prevent  a  divorce,  and 
that  accordingly  under  free  divorce  the 
more  serious-minded  would  remain  bound 
in  wedlock  while  the  more  frivolous- 
minded  would  enjoy  greater  freedom. 
For  the  question  of  free  divorce  does  not. 


Love  and  Ethics  29 

in  the  last  instance,  turn  upon  whether  it 
prevents  or  does  not  prevent  misfortune 
in  the  present.  The  main  thing  is,  that 
its  psychologic  effect  would  gradually  be- 
come a  growing  power  in  creating  a  beau- 
tiful, dignified  love  life. 

Proof  of  this  may  be  had  in  a  struggle 
that  has  already  been  fought  to  the  fin- 
ish. When  parents  decided  the  mar- 
riages of  their  children,  particularly  their 
daughters,  when  the  one  all-absorbing 
question  was,  ''Will  I  or  will  I  not  obtain 
the  object  of  my  love?"  how  lacking  in 
spiritual  qualities  was  love  then,  how  lit- 
tle part  it  played  in  the  whole  spiritual 
life,  how  few  shadings  it  had,  what  slen- 
der demands  it  made  upon  inward  har- 
mony. All  emphasis  had  to  be  laid  upon 
the  mere  external  struggle.  But  now, 
when  the  young  lovers  as  a  rule  decide 
their  own  fate,  what  a  wealth  of  new  spir- 
itual sensations,  of  varied  shadings,  of 
sentiment,  sensibility,   and  reserve  they 


80  Love  and  Ethics 

betray  to  those  who  are  privileged  to  look 
into  their  souls.  It  is  exactly  in  the  most 
soulful  girl  that  we  see  so  marked  an  in- 
dividualism in  the  will  to  choose  for  her- 
self that  only  a  vague  presentiment  of  a 
man's  unexpressed  desire  will  wither  her 
feelings,  should  the  hot  breath  blow 
upon  her  before  her  own  longings  have 
awakened.  And  among  the  loftier-mind- 
ed young  men  a  corresponding  will  is 
growing  to  wait  quietly  for  the  woman 
of  their  choice,  and  check  their  desires, 
which  develop  so  much  more  quickly 
than  in  women. 

These  young  men  and  women  have  al- 
ready travelled  far  beyond  the  danger  of 
*' throwing  themselves  away"  on  passing 
loves.  In  brief,  the  very  forces  that  lib- 
erty has  set  free  work  against  the  danger 
ous  consequences  of  liberty . 

In  "'Love  and  Marriage"  the  conviction 
that  the  sex  relation  must  be  invested 
with  an  all-pervasive,  all-decisive  signifi- 


Love  and  Ethics  81 

cance  and  sanctity  was  thus  expressed: 
love  must  again  become — though  on  a 
loftier  level — that  which  it  once  was 
when  the  nations  looked  upon  life  with 
reverence:  Religion. 

To  every  one  to  whom  Goethe's  word  is 
true,  that  the  aim  of  life  is  life  itself,  love 
will  be  a  religion,  and  not  only  love,  but 
every  spiritual  expression  of  life,  creation, 
the  search  for  truth,  joy  in  the  beautiful, 
work.  These  will  be  a  religion  in  the 
degree  in  which  they  are  connected  with 
the  whole  of  life.  In  other  words,  relig- 
ions perish  in  religion,  in  that  all-com- 
prehensive feeling  of  unity  for  which  the 
upliftment  of  life  is  the  only  adequate  di- 
vine service  and  the  revelations  of  univer- 
sal life  are  a  daily  prayer.  This  worship 
will  be  especially  dedicated  to  the  power 
that  carries  the  spark  of  life  from  genera- 
tion to  generation.  And  the  more  de- 
vout the  worship  the  more  certainly  will 
each  generation  rise  above  the  preceding. 


82  Love  and  Ethics 

Until  mankind  discovers  some  other 
way  of  maintaining  the  species,  the  sex 
relation,  undeniably,  is  the  earthly  origin 
of  life.  Accordingly,  the  evolutionary 
view  of  life  must  make  the  sex  relation 
the  starting-point  for  the  advancement  of 
all  life.  It  must  harmonize  the  moral 
concept  of  sex  with  the  demands  for  the 
advancement  of  life,  and  it  must  spread 
a  holiness  over  the  entire  kingdom  of  sex 
and  again  make  it  the  object  of  reverence 
if  it  serves  the  advancement  of  life.  This 
does  not  mean  merely  that  love  creates  a 
new  being.  It  means  that  when  created 
by  a  great  love  this  being  will  enlarge 
the  souls  from  generation  to  generation; 
it  means  that  a  richer,  fuller  human  be- 
ing is  created,  endowed  with  a  force  of 
feeling  that  radiates  its  warmth.  Love 
is  not  only  the  impulse  by  which  the  hu- 
man race  obtains  new  members;  it  is  the 
impulse  by  which  the  human  race  will 
become  more  closely  welded  together  and 


Love  and  Ethics  33 

ennobled  in  the  degree  in  which  the  chil- 
dren inherit  from  their  parents  the  great 
power  to  love,  a  power  which  in  all  hu- 
man relations  will  react  upon  the  whole  of 
mankind.  For  everything  in  life  is  con- 
nected with  sex  love.  Thus  it  is  that  in 
life-denying  religions  sex  love  is  the  arch- 
enemy, while  in  life-affirming  religions  it 
is  the  sacred  impulse  which  not  only  car- 
ries the  ladder  of  evolution  but  deter- 
mines it. 

Sex  love  stands  in  a  most  intimate  re- 
lation with  art,  which  gives  sex  selection 
its  ideals,  with  literature,  with  the  law, 
with  work  and  religion.  It  is  commonly 
believed  that  the  great  religious  feelings 
are  accessible  to  all.  Nothing  is  farther 
from  the  truth.  The  religious  feelings 
grow  great  only  in  those  souls  which,  un- 
der other  circumstances,  would  have  been 
just  as  deeply  affected  by  the  great  love. 
Since,  evidently,  souls  grow  greater  when 
issuing  from  the  union  of  great  feelings. 


84  Love  and  Ethics 

ideal  love  would  enlarge  the  power  and 
the  right  of  love. 

Scarcely  any  one  as  yet  comprehends 
this  idea  because  it  is  preached  to  a  gen- 
eration in  which  love  is  the  most  betrayed 
and  the  most  coarsened,  the  most  neg- 
lected and  the  most  despised  of  all  the 
great  forces  of  life,  so  much  so  that  even 
the  best  can  hardly  conceive  that  some 
day  it  is  all  bound  to  be  different.  Most 
people  still  shake  their  heads  in  doubt 
and  misgiving  when  told  that  mankind 
on  its  way  to  humanity  must  first  bethink 
itself  of  love  and  her  justice,  because  only 
thus  can  it  attain  a  higher  humanity. 
Even  the  most  highly  educated  are  so 
lacking  in  what  Dante  calls  intelletto 
d' amove,  or  at  least  in  an  understanding 
of  the  importance  of  love  culture,  that 
they  regard  these  words  as  a  temptation 
to  all  lovers  to  inflate  their  own  feelings 
until  they  carry  them  as  in  a  balloon 
high  above  life,  whence  they  look  down 


Love  and  Ethics  35 

upon  it  absorbed  in  twofold  reverence  of 
themselves.  In  other  words,  every  de- 
fence of  the  value  of  love  to  life,  evident 
to  almost  anybody,  is  construed  as  an  ex- 
hortation to  overlook  all  other  life  values 
for  the  sake  of  love. 

Have  those  who  speak  so  no  knowledge 
of  the  fact  that  religion  is  sanctifying, 
strength-giving,  compelling  only  to  the 
extent  in  which  it  is  love,  and  that  the 
soul  is  never  more  religious,  nor  more  in 
need  of  religion,  than  when  it  loves?  For 
the  soul  has  a  limited  amount  of  energy. 
What  it  expends  in  one  way  it  cannot 
give  in  another.  Have  they  no  knowl- 
edge of  the  fact  that  love  in  all  its  mani- 
festations is  of  all  feelings  the  most  soul- 
enlarging,  the  most  unifying,  especially 
that  love  which  absorbs  what  is  highest 
in  all  other  loves  because  it  forms,  as  no 
other  love  does,  the  unity  of  the  soul  and 
the  senses,  of  the  individual  and  social 
life,  because  it  forms  the  innermost  car- 


86  Love  and  Ethics 

pels   of    the    great    mystical    world-rose 
around  which  all  other  leaves  cluster? 

That  is  why  every  endeavor  to  solve 
social  and  political  problems  is  like  build- 
ing on  ground  shaken  by  an  earthquake, 
all  cultural  creative  activity  like  a  stream 
from  an  infected  source,  all  development 
of  power  in  the  other  fields  of  life  a 
growth  from  a  shrivelled  root.  And  it 
will  continue  to  be  so  until  a  new  relig- 
ious reverence  for  love  is  established  as 
the  sole  healthy,  beautiful  condition  of 
sex  life.  Such  a  conception  of  love  will 
create  a  firm  foundation  for  society,  it 
will  purify  the  source,  and  convey  nour- 
ishment to  the  root.  No  one  who  has 
gone  through  the  poor  quarter  of  a  large 
city  can  have  the  hardihood  to  say  that 
we  talk  too  much  nowadays  about  the  so- 
cial question.  But  the  sex  relation  is  to- 
day the  poor  quarter  of  all  social  classes. 
And  yet  when  a  single  voice  is  raised  to 
speak  this  truth,  even  thinking  people  cry 


Love  and  Ethics  37 

out,  ''Too  many  words  are  wasted  on  love, 
too  much  importance  is  attached  to  it." 

Nothing  so  well  confirms  the  poet's  dic- 
tum that  ''the  present  is  so  full  of  matri- 
monial tragedies  and  wasted  love  that  it 
has  lost  its  hearing  for  its  own  misfor- 
tune. " 

It  is  still  only  the  very  small  minority 
that  listen  when  the  religious  or  human- 
itarian preacher  preaching  morality 
points  out  the  ravages  caused  by  the  sins 
and  diseases  of  sex  life,  ravages  so  ap- 
palling that  we  should  suppose  the  social 
consciousness  would  have  been  aroused 
long  ago.  Hence  it  is  not  astonishing  to 
find  that  practically  no  one  as  yet  recog- 
nizes that  these  ravages  have  their  deep- 
est root  in  the  denial  or  the  ignoring  of 
the  value  of  love  to  life.  Nor  is  it  aston- 
ishing that  people  do  not  understand 
when  they  are  told  of  the  numerous  ob- 
stacles to  life  due  to  the  same  cause, 
which  cannot  be  verified  by  figures. 


88  LiOve  and  Ethics 

They  ransack  every  nook  and  cranny 
and  ferret  out  arguments  to  prove  the  so- 
cial value  of  marriage.  They  pile  figures 
upon  figures  to  show  that  the  mortality 
through  disease  and  suicide  and  that 
crime  and  drunkenness  are  greater  among 
the  [unmarried  than  the  married;  that 
child  mortality  and  criminality  are  great- 
er among  those  born  out  of  wedlock  than 
in  wedlock.  Against  love,  on  the  other 
hand,  they  adduce  the  divorces,  suicides, 
and  crimes  it  causes.  But  they  cite  no 
statistics  of  all  those  who  have  remained 
unmarried,  or  have  gone  insane,  or  be- 
come suicides  or  criminals  or  parents  of 
illegitimate  children  because  social  condi- 
tions or  the  prejudices  of  the  parents  have 
prevented  a  love  marriage,  because  one 
of  the  two  has  voluntarily  or  through 
compulsion  turned  traitor  to  love  for  the 
sake  of  wealth,  or  ''duty,"  or  the  ''hap- 
piness of  others. " 

True,  we  now  meet  but  rarely  with  the 


Love  and  Ethics  39 

sort  of  victims  of  which  there  used  to  be 
many,  when  parents  inculcated  in  their 
daughter  the  idea  that  she  ''must  not 
think  of  her  own  happiness,  but  the 
happiness  of  others. ' '  That  is  to  say  she 
must  ''make  happy"  the  man  whom  her 
parents  approved,  but  make  unhappy  the 
man  she  loved.  That  the  man  of  the 
parents'  choice  as  well  as  the  parents 
themselves  forgot  their  duty  to  think  of 
the  happiness  of  others  instead  of  their 
own — that  was  left  quite  out  of  count. 
But  what  a  hazy  conception  people  have 
even  yet  of  the  truth  that  happiness  in 
the  love  of  two  young  persons  is  an  essen- 
tial part  of  the  happiness  of  the  commu- 
nity; that  accordingly  their  main  duty  is 
to  their  love;  that  they  will  be  able  to 
fulfill  all  their  other  duties  better  if  first 
of  all  they  fulfill  their  love  duty;  that 
love  is  not  the  contradiction  of  duty,  but 
the  first  and  the  greatest  duty  in  contract- 
ing a  marriage. 


40  Love  and  Ethics 

In  sporadic  instances,  to  be  sure,  the 
strength  and  victory  of  duty  has  meant 
the  decline  and  fall  of  love,  whether  a 
happy  or  an  unhappy  love;  or  the  reverse 
has  been  true,  love  has  caused  the  down- 
fall of  duty.  But  who  stops  to  think  of 
all  the  energy  lost  to  every  nation  be- 
cause the  majority  must  still  dissipate 
their  energies  day  in  day  out,  in  dull  res- 
ignation to  all  the  obstacles  in  the  way  of 
love,  or  in  a  secret  struggle  against  love. 
Who  counts  all  the  half -completed  works, 
all  the  energies  weakened  from  the  very 
start,  hindered  in  their  development  or 
prematurely  exhausted,  which,  when  re- 
vived, never  blossom  fully  and  fail  to 
achieve  their  aim,  or  strive  for  lower 
aims?  All  this  through  unhappy  family 
life.  WTio  stops  to  think  that  a  large 
part  of  this  social  waste  of  energy  could 
have  been  avoided  had  men  and  women 
not  been  taught  to  take  everything  else 
more  seriously  than  the  sex  life;  had  men 


Love  and  Ethics  41 

and  women  not  been  educated  for  every- 
thing else  but  marriage;  had  men  and 
women  not  obtained  from  society  more 
right  for  every  other  great  life  demand 
than  for  their  love? 

The  fact  that  countless  human  beings 
lead  a  decent,  beautiful  life  without  the 
happiness  of  love  does  not  prove  that 
their  life  might  not  have  been  still  more 
beautiful  and  stronger,  hence  more  im- 
portant to  society,  if  possessed  of  that 
happiness.  Against  those  who  despite 
their  lack  of  such  happiness  are  not  with- 
out wisdom  and  warmth  of  feeling,  must 
be  placed  those  who  outside  of  marriage  or 
through  it  have  become  frozen  or  distorted, 
or  have  gone  to  rack  and  ruin.  And  most 
people  have  become  so  not  through  the 
inevitable  tragedy  that  love's  destiny  some- 
times imposes  and  no  order  of  society  can 
relieve,  but  because  the  older  generation 
has  forced  upon  the  younger  its  view  that 
love's  value  in  life  is  extremely  small. 


42  Love  and  Ethics 

When  we  have  got  to  the  point  at 
which  love  is  regarded  with  religious  rev- 
erence as  the  necessary  basis  of  the  ''sa- 
credness  of  the  generation,"  a  large  part 
of  the  present  social  rescue  work  will  be 
rendered  superfluous.  The  number  of 
degenerates  and  erring  will  diminish  in 
proportion  as  love  becomes  one  of  the 
means  of  man's  bliss,  not  the  sin  that 
causes  his  fall.  When  once  the  mighty 
powers  now  confined  in  the  prison  of  low 
passions,  of  unnecessary  suffering  through 
sex  life  shall  have  been  liberated,  then 
not  only  the  forces  at  present  wasted  will 
serve  to  benefit  all  the  rest  of  life,  but 
also  all  the  new  forces  that  love  will 
awaken  or  intensify. 

But  the  love  I  mean  is  the  personal 
and  great  love,  which  opens  up  to  men 
all  the  endless  variety  of  life,  not  the  lit- 
tle love  dalliance  which  obliterates  vari- 
ety. That  man  or  woman  has  never 
even  divined  the   meaning  of  personal 


Love  and  Ethics  43 

love  who  does  not  know  that  above  all  it 
awakens  the  feeling  that  one's  own  being 
and  other  people's  beings  are  something 
great  and  unfathomable;  that  it  signifies 
the  love  of  the  personality  of  another  as 
expressed  in  individual  and  social  work  as 
well  as  in  love  and  the  home;  that  it  sig- 
nifies a  reverence  of  personality  as  ex- 
pressed in  the  hour  of  joy  as  well  as  in 
the  eternal  questioning  of  the  aim  of  life, 
to  which  love  gives  an  added  significance. 
He  who  thinks  that  a  man  imbued  with 
such  a  love  never  concerns  himself  with 
anything  but  his  own  feelings  has  never 
known  such  a  man.  What  one  lives  or 
is  through  and  through  one  speaks  and 
thinks  about  least.  Even  as  the  healthy 
man  does  not  speak  of  his  health,  or  the 
innocent  man  of  his  innocence,  but  health 
and  innocence  speak  and  think  through 
him. 

When  personal   love  is  permitted   to 
show  its  power  to  create  what  Ruskin  has 


44  Love  and  Ethics 

called  the  real  wealth  of  nations,  **as 
many  healthy,  full-blooded,  happy  hu- 
man beings  as  possible,"  then  humanity 
will  reduce  to  harmony  one  of  the  great 
fundamental  contradictions  of  life,  the 
contradiction  between  man's  being  and 
woman's  being.  Then,  too,  the  general 
prospects  will  be  widened,  the  other  pain- 
ful contradictions  of  life  will  be  harmo- 
nized, and  humanity  will  begin  to  reach 
up  to  the  heights  to  which  the  present 
generation  is  but  a  step.  Love  must  at- 
tain the  prestige  and  the  esteem  now 
withheld  from  it,  because,  as  I  have  said, 
the  evolution  of  love  is  the  mightiest 
weapon  for  the  unbroken  chain  of  human 
birth,  by  which  generation  after  genera- 
tion inherits  and  transmits  its  physical 
and  psychical  powers,  which  grow  nobler 
and  attain  a  finer  equilibrium  the  more 
closely  together  love  can  weld  the  mascu- 
line and  the  feminine. 

But  love,  in  its  evolution,  has  already 


Love  and  Ethics  45 

become  an  important  factor  in  harmoniz- 
ing masculine  and  feminine  qualities. 
Thus  we  see  men  and  women  cooperating 
in  the  solution  of  the  social  problems. 
Yet  their  cooperation  is,  as  a  rule,  a 
merely  mechanical  combination  of  mas- 
culine and  feminine  capacities,  though 
growing  ever  more  organic.  More  and 
more  masculine  and  feminine  soiils  com- 
bine for  the  furtherance  of  all  the  aims 
of  life.  The  will  of  the  modern  woman 
that  marriage  should  continue  to  he  love 
signifies,  among  other  things,  that  the 
spiritual  interchange  between  man  and 
woman  and  their  common  life  must 
embrace  more  than  merely  the  sphere  of 
domestic  life.  It  signifies  that  each  loves 
the  expression  of  the  personality  of  the 
other  in  fields  outside  their  own  common 
life.  Man  will  thus  voluntarily  encour- 
age woman's  influence  in  fields  of  work 
in  which,  left  to  himself  with  his  n^ascu- 
line  mode  of  thought  and  action,  he  has 


4d  Love  and  Ethics 

for  so  long  not  only  wasted  the  new  lives 
woman  gave  to  humanity,  but  also  the 
new  intellectual  forces  which  she  has  cre- 
ated, especially  her  own  deeper  and  finer 
susceptibility. 

An  increasing  number  of  women,  for 
example,  are  their  husbands'  friends  in 
the  same  line  of  work.  Both  together  or 
each  for  himself,  but  acting  and  reacting 
on  each  other,  they  accomplish  so  much 
more  than  would  be  possible  for  each 
alone.  While  this  cooperation  is  attained 
through  love,  those  imbued  with  the  new 
idea  no  longer  consider  love  a  means  for 
attaining  other  ends.  They  consider  it 
something  to  be  striven  for  as  an  aim  in 
itself.  For  they  never  feel  they  are  done 
with  their  love.  In  love,  as  in  every- 
thing else,  they  want  to  attain  to  ever 
higher  stages. 

Men,  it  is  true,  maintain  that  love  can 
never  fill  their  existence  as  completely  as 
it  does  women's,  because  by  a  natural  ne- 


Love  and  Ethics  47 

cessity  man  seeks  the  rest  of  life's  variety 
outside,  where  his  instinct  for  action  and 
creation  constantly  finds  new  aims;  while 
to  a  woman  it  is  equally  natural  to  turn 
to  the  inside,  where  by  an  immutable 
law  she  finds  her  highest  sphere  of  action 
as  a  mother.  Or,  as  the  poet  before  quoted 
has  expressed  it:  ''Man  can  merely  love, 
woman  is  love  itself."  When  man  be- 
comes womanish  in  this  regard,  or  woman 
mannish,  the  contrast,  that  is,  the  spirit- 
ual condition  of  sex  love,  is  removed. 
The  ''femininity"  that  man  loves  in 
woman  is  that  very  inward-turning  qual- 
ity; and  the  "masculinity"  that  woman 
loves  in  man  is  that  very  outward-turning 
quality.  It  is  an  indisputable  fact  that 
if  the  majority  of  women  no  longer  had 
the  calm  and  repose  to  abide  at  the  source 
of  life,  but  wanted  to  navigate  all  the 
seas  with  men,  the  sex  contrasts  would 
resolve  themselves  not  into  harmony  but 
into  monotony. 


48  Love  and  Ethics 

Until  women  come  to  recognize  this  it 
must  still  be  insisted  that  the  gain  to  so- 
ciety is  nothing  if  millions  of  women  do 
the  work  that  men  could  do  better,  and 
evade  or  fulfill  but  poorly  the  greater 
tasks  of  life  and  happiness,  the  creation  of 
men  and  the  creation  of  souls.  To  fulfill 
these  tasks  properly  women  require  the 
same  human  rights  as  men,  and  until 
they  have  obtained  these  rights  ''femin- 
ism" has  still  all  its  work  before  it.  But 
in  proportion  as  women  acquire  the  right 
of  suffrage,  using  this  word  not  merely 
in  its  narrow  political  sense,  but  in  all 
senses,  the  right  of  choice  or  selection  in 
general — in  proportion  as  they  acquire 
this  right  they  must  learn  to  use  it  in  the 
field  of  life.  They  must  learn  to  know 
that  their  power  is  greatest  in  those  prov- 
inces in  which  ''imponderable"  values 
are  created,  values  that  cannot  be  re- 
duced to  figures  and  yet  are  the  sole  val- 
ues capable  of   transforming  humanity. 


Love  and  Ethics  49 

Of  what  avail  is  it  for  women  to  speak  at 
peace  congresses  if  the  children  in  their 
own  nurseries  get  whippings  or  beat  one 
another?  Of  what  avail  for  women  to 
speak  at  ethical  congresses  if  they  are  un- 
able to  save  even  one  man  from  the  mis- 
ery of  being  a  mere  fragment,  if  they  are 
unable  to  bring  harmonious  unity  into 
his  life.  Feminism  finds  a  very  apt  crit- 
icism in  two  apothegms  of  Goethe.  He 
speaks  of  the  folly  of  fleeing  the  sun  to 
warm  oneself  at  the  frost;  and  the  first 
condition  of  wisdom,  he  says,  is,  '"To 
seem  nothing,  to  be  everything." 

The  sun  diffuses  its  warmth  where  the 
values  of  the  soul  grow;  the  frost  reigns 
where  utilities  are  created  that  the  soul 
recks  not  of. 

The  values  of  the  soul  are  to  be  found 
in  the  world  of  feelings.  It  is  a  pity  the 
modern  American  reform  proposition  has 
so  blinded  many  women  that  they  do  not 
see  that  the  American  programme  is  like 


50  Love  and  Ethics 

the  American  birds  whose  colors  are 
magnificent  but  who  cannot  sing.  The 
American  soul  in  general  still  lacks  mu- 
sic. It  has  no  ear  for  the  tones  and  half- 
tones of  life.  The  millions  of  women  in 
America  who  leave  the  care  of  their 
homes  and  children  to  collective  work 
while  they  themselves  follow  their  profes- 
sions or  their  trades  only  seem  to  be  so- 
cially useful.  For  it  is  not  utilities  but 
complete  human  beings  that  elevate  life. 
Accordingly,  all  the  outward  improve- 
ments through  legislation  and  social  work 
remain  on  the  whole  without  effect,  be- 
cause neither  men  nor  women  understand 
that  what  really  counts  is  the  work  done 
in  the  field  of  ethical  values  and  in  the 
furtherance  of  spiritual  conditions. 

Forms,  it  is  true,  react  upon  spiritual 
conditions,  but  spiritual  conditions  react 
infinitely  more  upon  forms.  The  best 
forms  for  marriage,  for  the  right  of 
motherhood,   and   for   the  protection   of 


Love  and  Ethics  51 

children  will  remain  ineffective  as  long 
as  women  are  unable  to  follow  the  ten 
commandments  given  them  by  Schleier- 
macher,  commandments  which,  if  fol- 
lowed, would  renew  humanity  from  with- 
in outward.  The  sense,  not  the  wording, 
of  these  commandments  is: 

Thou  shalt  have  no  lover  except  the 
one  lover,  but  thou  shalt  be  a  friend  of 
thy  friends  without  eagerness  to  please 
and  without  flirtatiousness. 

Thou  shalt  create  no  ideal  unto  thy- 
self, neither  after  thine  own  image,  nor 
after  the  image  of  others,  but  thou  shalt 
love  thy  husband  for  his  own  sake,  for 
what  he  is  and  for  the  way  he  is.  For 
nature  is  a  stern  avenger,  who  visits  the 
empty  romanticism  of  the  girl  upon  the 
woman  unto  the  third  and  fourth  period 
of  her  emotions. 

Thou  shalt  not  profane  the  sanctum  of 
thy  love,  for  whosoever  gives  herself  away 
for  any  profit  whatsoever,  even  if  it  be 


52  Love  and  Ethics 

for  the  legal  right  to  be  a  mother,  loses 
her  fineness  of  feeling. 

Thou  shalt  contract  no  marriage  that 
shall  have  to  be  broken. 

Thou  shalt  not  desire  to  be  loved  by 
him  whom  thou  lovest  not  likewise. 

Thou  shalt  not  bear  false  testimony 
either  in  word  or  in  deed  by  putting  a 
fine  gloss  over  the  barbarities  of  our  pres- 
ent customs. 

Thou  shalt  desire  the  education,  the 
art,  the  wisdom  and  the  honor  of  men. 

There  is  nothing  more  futile  than  to  try 
to  prove  the  inferiority  of  woman  to  man, 
unless  it  be  to  try  to  prove  her  equality. 
That  the  reflexive  life  is  stronger  in  wom- 
an than  in  man  is  as  important  for  the 
elevation  of  life  as  that  man's  strength 
displays  itself  in  another  direction.  Just 
as  the  difference  between  man  and  woman 
is  essential  in  the  natural  life,  so  also  is  it 
essential  in  the  cultural  life.  Unnamed, 
women  cooperate   in   men's   works,   and 


Love  and  Ethics  53 

men  in  women's  works.  The  third  sex 
will  never  have  a  share  in  the  work  of 
creation.  Spiritual  fruitfulness  will  re- 
sult only  in  the  measure  in  which  wom- 
an's soul  is  organically  welded  with  the 
man's  works  and  ideals,  and  the  man's 
soul  with  the  woman's  works  and  ideals. 
That  man's  work  belongs  more  to  the  m- 
dividual  side  of  life  and  so  often  leads  to 
strife  and  division,  but  also  to  progress 
and  neoformation;  that  woman's  work 
belongs  more  to  the  social  side  of  life  and 
so  often  makes  for  cohesiveness;  that  she 
is  a  better  guardian  of  the  warmth  of 
feeling  that  ''has  gradually  made  its  way 
into  human  life,"  as  Bjornson  says — all 
this  does  not  tip  the  scale  of  values  one 
fraction  of  an  ounce  in  favor  of  the  one 
rather  than  the  other. 

Americanism  views  all  problems  of  life 
from  a  very  low  standpoint  in  regard- 
ing the  question  of  self-maintenance  as 
woman's  principal  aim.    Self -maintenance 


54  Love  and  Ethics 

for  the  woman  as  well  as  for  the  man  is 
merely  the  primary  external  prerequisite 
to  a  dignified  human  existence.  The 
most  important  step,  especially  for  the 
future  of  socialism,  is  to  give  every  one 
the  opportunity  of  self-maintenance  by 
means  of  the  work  he  is  best  able  to  do, 
the  work,  therefore,  which  will  conduce 
most  to  his  happiness.  This  is  important 
for  the  very  reason  that  such  work  yields 
the  greatest  values  to  society.  And  when 
a  profounder  culture  will  have  given  us 
deeper  insight  into  these  things,  it  will 
seem  as  natural  for  society  to  maintain 
its  women  as  it  is  now  natural  for  it  to 
maintain  its  army  and  navy,  because 
women  perform  the  greatest  social  func- 
tion when  they  educate  the  new  genera- 
tion. It  would  be  sad,  indeed,  if  the  new 
society  were  to  make  an  engineer  out  of 
a  Beethoven  or  a  Wagner.  And  it  would 
be  an  equally  great  misuse  of  energy  if  it 
put  mothers  to  work  outside  the  home 


Love  and  Ethics  55 

instead  of  making  them  educators  of  the 
soul.  That  most  mothers  now  employ 
a  method  of  education  which  is  to  edu- 
cation what  organ-grinding  is  to  music 
merely  proves  that  every  art  must  be 
learned.  But  it  does  not  prove  that 
women's  energies  would  on  the  whole  be 
better  utilized  if  applied  to  other  tasks 
than  that  of  educating  a  more  perfect  hu- 
man race,  a  task  for  which  all  present  en- 
deavors are  mere  preparations  and  the 
general  connection  of  which  is  not  yet 
understood.  A  more  perfect  race  means 
a  more  soulful  race,  a  more  soulful  race  a 
race  having  greater  capacity  for  love. 
And  from  no  other  center  can  this  grow- 
ing power  of  love  radiate  toward  all  fields 
of  life  than  from  the  love  between  man 
and  woman,  between  parents  and  chil- 
dren. 


THUS,  the  most  encouraging  sign  of 
the  time,  that  which  holds  out  the 
greatest  promise,  is  the  fact  that 
the  modern  woman's  intellectual  develop- 
ment and  the  modern  man's  erotic  devel- 
opment have  reached  a  stage  at  which 
they  are  beginning  to  invest  with  a  new 
significance  the  woman's  inward-turning 
quality  and  the  man's  outward-turning 
quality.  We  are  perceiving  the  possi- 
bility of  a  love  which  will  be  the  syn- 
thesis of  both  qualities,  when  woman  has 
learned  from  man  to  esteem  beauty  in 
the  form  of  activity,  and  he  has  learned 
from  her  to  esteem  beauty  in  the  form  of 
repose. 

Although  Eros  still  seems  of  as  slight 
importance  to  men  in  general  as  the 
planet  of  the  same  name,  yet  the  older 
Eros   has    engrossed   their    attention    as 

56 


Love  and  Ethics  57 

much  as  the  newly  discovered  Eros  has 
the  astronomers'  attention;  because  so 
many  other  questions  are  connected  with 
the  problems  evoked  by  the  earthly  as 
well  as  the  heavenly  Eros.  Eros  is  so 
easily  able  to  force  a  man  off  his  track 
that  ''he  has  been  generally  compelled  to 
follow  his  calling  in  life  in  the  company 
of  love  or  in  rebellion  against  it. "  This 
experience  is  probably  the  chief  reason 
for  man's  old  hatred  of  woman.  He  felt 
lowered  by  the  kind  of  love  he  permitted 
himself,  and  he  felt  injured  if  he  permit- 
ted himself  no  love  at  all.  The  present 
stage  of  woman's  emancipation  has  pro- 
duced new  adverse  conditions  for  men 
through  the  disintegration  brought  about 
either  by  her  social  activity  or  by  her 
love.  Father  and  mother  have  thus  be- 
gun to  suffer  from  lack  of  a  home  since 
women  have  grown  tired  of  sitting  at 
home  and  waiting  for  the  heures  perdues 
of  their  husbands — as  such  men  have  un- 


58  Love  and  Ethics 

til  now  regarded  the  hours  devoted  to  the 
home;  not  without  reason,  seeing  that 
women  have  filled  those  hours,  in  their 
youth,  with  billing  and  cooing,  in  later 
years,  with  grumbling  and  squabbling. 
/  But  in  all  cases  in  which  there  is  an 
affinity  of  souls  and  the  sympathy  of 
friendship,  love  is  what  it  always  was  and 
always  will  be,  the  cooperation  of  the 
I  father  with  the  mother  in  the  education 
of  the  children,  as  well  as  the  cooperation 
of  the  mother  with  the  father  in  all  other 
great  social  works.  If  such  parents  were 
to  do  nothing  but  give  life  to  their  chil- 
dren and  were  to  leave  their  education  to 
society,  they  would  feel  deprived  of  the 
best  part  of  parenthood,  their  life  in  com- 
mon, in  which  the  personality  of  the  man 
beloved  of  the  mother  and  the  personal- 
ity of  the  woman  beloved  of  the  father 
exert  direct  influence  upon  the  children, 
more  important  than  all  other  education, 
and  increasing  in  importance  in  propor- 


Love  and  Ethics  59 

tion  as  the  parents  grow  through  each 
other. 

We  are  thus  led  to  the  conclusion  that 
because  happiness  through  love  satisfies 
one  of  the  deepest  demands  of  human 
nature  and  directly  sets  in  motion  some 
of  its  best  forces  and  increases  others,  the 
happiness  of  the  individual  in  love  consti- 
tutes a  social  value,  and  the  higher  the 
standard  of  love  of  the  individuals,  the 
higher  will  be  the  entire  plane  of  society. 

But  not  all  human  beings  are  endowed 
with  the  gift  to  love.  Even  those  who 
possess  it  have  other  propensities  besides. 
Consequently,  neither  to  the  man  nor  the 
woman  can  the  concept  of  happiness  in 
general  mean  quite  the  same  as  happiness 
in  love,  nor,  in  the  main,  can  it  mean  the 
satisfaction  of  those  needs  or  the  applica- 
tion of  those  capacities  which  depend  on 
conditions  over  which  the  individual  is 
himself  not  quite  master.  Happiness 
that  does  not  signify  the  highest  possible 


60  Love  and  Ethics 

development  of  all  our  powers  would 
seem  small.  The  meaning  of  happiness 
is  the  perfection  of  every  great  capacity 
and  the  constant  expectation  of  satisfying 
still  greater  and  greater  demands  for  per- 
fection. Happiness  means  to  love,  work, 
think,  suffer,  and  enjoy  on  an  ever 
higher  plane.  This  height  is  attained 
sometimes  through  ''happy,"  sometimes 
through ' '  unhappy"  circumstances.  Thus 
happiness  in  its  profoundest  sense  is  the 
elevation  of  life  through  the  destinies  of 
life.  In  this  sense  happiness  is  the  sole 
duty  to  him  who  sees  the  aim  of  life  in 
life  itself.  For  so  long  as  there  is  left  a 
single  duty  that  has  not  been  transformed 
into  the  feeling  of  happiness,  the  individ- 
ual's life  and  the  life  of  the  great  collec- 
tivity are  still  without  their  full  meaning. 
In  all  human  interests  happiness  is  at 
once  the  end  and  the  means;  and  not 
least  so  in  philanthropic  work  for  the 
happiness    of  others.     Philanthropy,    or 


Love  and  Ethics  61 

social  work,  will  fail  just  as  Christian 
charity  failed,  if  performed  merely  for 
the  sake  of  others.  It  is  only  through 
his  own  demands  for  happiness  or  the 
conditions  that  have  satisfied  them  that  a 
man  can  have  any  knowledge  of  what  those 
demands  and  conditions  are  to  others. 
The  social  reformer  indifferent  to  his  own 
happiness  is  nothing  but  a  blind  leader 
of  the  blind. 

Happiness  as  a  duty  is  a  concept  which 
in  its  relation  to  love  may  be  illustrated 
by  a  comparison  with  another  great  value 
of  happiness,  that  of  health.  In  the  Mid- 
dle Ages,  when  men  tried  to  enfeeble 
their  bodies  by  hunger,  dirt,  and  other 
mortifications  of  the  flesh,  when  they  saw 
God's  punishment  in  plagues  and  its  cure 
in  processions  of  flagellants,  they  could 
not  have  had  the  remotest  notion  of  sani- 
tation as  we  conceive  it  to-day.  It  was 
not  until  health  came  to  be  regarded  as 
the  will  of  God  that  individuals  consid- 


62  Love  and  Ethics 

ered  it  their  duty  to  promote  it;  and  it 
was  not  until  life  on  earth  came  to  be  re- 
garded as  a  good  thing  that  society  con- 
ceived it  to  be  its  duty  to  apply  the 
achievements  of  science  to  laws  of  health, 
^K  the  overcoming  of  disease,  and  the  pro- 
longation of  life.  Health  gradually  be- 
came an  end  in  itself,  happiness,  which 
we  are  justified  in  striving  for  for  its  own 
sake,  irrespective  of  whether  it  may  be 
made  useful  for  other  purposes  or  not. 
Nevertheless,  even  to-day  there  are  still 
sick  people  whose  spiritual  life  has  had 
•the  effect  of  intensifying  their  physical 
malady.  There  are  many  again  who,  de- 
spite their  conscientiousness  in  promoting 
their  health,  have  had  the  misfortune  to 
lose  it.  There  are  some  who  are  selfish 
in  the  excessive  care  they  take  of  their 
health;  others  who  are  magnanimous  in 
sacrificing  their  health  for  an  end  they 
regard  as  higher.  But  all  this  does  not 
vitiate  the  general  rule,  that  every  indi- 


Love  and  Ethics  63 

vidual  regards  and  treats  his  health  as  of 
so  great  a  direct  value  to  himself  and  so- 
ciety that  it  is  his  duty  as  well  as  his  right 
to  strive  for  the  happiness  of  health  for  his 
own  sake,  not  merely  for  the  sake  of  others. 
In  other  words  the  entire  conception  of 
the  Middle  Ages  has  in  this  case  been 
completely  reversed. 

Coming  generations  will  similarly  re- 
verse the  present  conception  of  love,  a 
conception  still  as  inimical  to  life  as  was 
the  idea  of  health  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
This  inversion  or  transmutation  of  values 
will  not  prevent  the  appearance  of  condi- 
tions in  love  similar  to  those  which  I  have 
just  mentioned  in  regard  to  health.  But 
the  great  principle  remains,  that  each  in- 
dividual wdll  regard  and  treat  his  love  as 
a  great  value  both  to  himself  and  society, 
and  that  it  will  be  his  duty  as  well  as  his 
right  to  strive  for  this  happiness. 


SINCE  the  above  was  written  Doctor 
Foerster  has  made  a  criticism  of  my 
views;  which  in  his  Christian  ascetic 
conception  of  life  is  quite  natural.  Ac- 
cording to  this  conception  obedience  to 
the  laws  of  bourgeois  society  and  religious 
authority  is  the  only  road  to  a  higher  ev- 
olution; self -discipline  and  self-renuncia- 
tion the  best  conditions  of  growth.  Ev- 
ery word  spoken  in  behalf  of  the  sanctity 
and  the  right  of  love  is  in  this  view  ''wor- 
ship of  nature."  Suffering,  not  passion, 
should  be  the  road  to  that  higher  culture 
which  is  to  be  attained  through  self -con- 
quest. The  best  love  is  fidelity  and  pa- 
tience; these  alone  release  the  profound- 
est  spiritual  forces  and  join  man  to  the 
divine.  Fidelity  in  marriage  frees  man 
from  his  sensual  instincts  and  passions 
and  affords  him  the  possibility  of  person- 

64 


Love  and  Ethics  65 

al  development  in  the  higher  sense.  On 
the  other  hand  ''free  love"  does  not  de- 
velop these  spiritual  conditions,  and 
motherhood  out  of  wedlock  must  be  re- 
jected because  it  does  not  give  the  child  a 
secure  place  in  a  settled  family  life  and 
does  not  entail  serious  responsibility  for 
the  child.  Since  the  child  has  sprung 
from  passion  alone  the  mother's  love  fades 
away  in  the  face  of  responsibility. 

These  views  in  the  ascetic  conception  of 
life  are,  as  I  have  said,  natural.  But  he 
to  whom  the  aim  of  life  is  life  itself  feels 
the  same  reverence  for  its  sensual  as  for 
its  spiritual  demands.  He  knows  there 
is  immoral  asceticism  just  as  there  is  im- 
moral sensual  passion — immoral,  because 
it  is  not  uplifting  to  humanity  or  the  in- 
dividual. He  knows  that  when  two  un- 
married persons  give  life  to  a  child  nature 
often  rewards  ''passion"  by  endowing  the 
child  with  splendid  equipment.  Nature 
seems   to   pursue    a   mysterious   purpose 


66  Love  and  Ethics 

with  this  quality  of  ''passion"  which  the 
sense  of  responsibility  cannot  achieve. 

The  important  thing,  therefore,  is  to 
harmonize  our  concepts  of  right  with  na- 
ture after  we  have  learned  to  know  nature 
by  thorough  investigation.  It  is  not  im- 
portant to  suppress  nature  uncondition- 
ally in  favor  of  moral  concepts  distinctly 
opposed  to  nature.  A  higher  culture  in 
love  can  be  attained  only  by  correlating 
self-control  with  love  and  parental  respon- 
sibility^ a  correlation  that  will  follow  as  a 
consequence  when  love  and  parental  re- 
spoTisihility  are  made  the  sole  conditions  of 
sex  relations. 

For  this  reason  the  young  generation 
must  be  educated  to  ever  greater  demands 
in  love,  to  an  ever  higher  conception  of 
their  right  to  parenthood.  Self-control 
must  be  taught  in  all  those  relations  in 
which  it  is  a  condition  of  true  love  and 
healthy  parenthood.  But  self-renuncia- 
tion must  not  be  preached  when  complete 


Love  and  Ethics  67 

happiness  in  love  will  contribute  to  the 
growth  of  the  individual  soul  and  human- 
ity at  large. 

It  is  solely  from  this  one  moral  point 
of  view  that  motherhood  without  mar- 
riage as  well  as  the  right  of  free  divorce 
must  be  judged.  Irresponsible  mother- 
hood is  always  sin  with  or  without  mar- 
riage, responsible  motherhood  is  always 
sacred  with  or  without  marriage.  Free- 
dom of  divorce  can  never  remove  the  ob- 
stacles that  feelings  and  circumstances 
7lace  in  the  way  of  motherhood.  But  it 
can  overcome  the  irrational  doctrine  that 
it  is  always  the  death  of  the  soul  to  sacri- 
fice others,  and  the  life  of  the  soul  to 
sacrifice  oneself  for  others,  and  that  the 
individual  who  decides  the  question  of 
sacrifice  in  his  own  favor  thereby  proves 
his  worthlessness  to  society. 

Unprejudiced  reflection,  however,  shows 
that  in  an  unhappy  marriage  one  of  the 
parties  must  sacrifice  the  other.     He  who 


68  Love  and  Ethics 

goes  sacrifices  the  one  that  wants  to 
hold  him  back;  he  who  is  held  back  is 
the  victim  of  him  that  restrains  him. 
Sometimes  it  is  a  greater  sin  to  allow 
oneself  to  be  sacrificed  than  to  sacrifice 
others,  at  other  times  the  reverse  is  true. 
And  if  we  are  asked  who  is  to  decide 
which  is  the  lesser  sin  the  answer  is:  the 
individual's  conscience  which  has  to  de- 
cide other  equally  difficult  conflicts  in 
duty.  There  is  but  one  alternative, 
either  the  Catholic  marriage,  or  freedom 
on  one's  own  responsibility. 

As  with  all  other  questions  the  answer 
to  this  question  depends  upon  one's  con- 
ception of  life. 

Either  we  believe  that  man  must  bend 
his  reason,  his  will  and  his  conscience  to 
the  decrees  of  authority,  or  we  believe 
that  man  may  find  his  own  way  through 
repeated  experience  and  many  and  vari- 
ous trials  of  power.  Either  we  believe 
that  obedience  is  the  sole  road  to  a  higher 


Love  and  Ethics  69 

culture  or  we  believe  that  rebellion  may 
be  just  as  essential  as  obedience.  Either 
we  believe  that  the  sensual  instincts  are 
pitfalls  and  obstacles,  or  we  regard  them 
as  guides  in  the  upward  movement  of  life 
on  a  par  with  reason  and  conscience.  If 
we  hold  the  latter  opinion  then  we  know 
that  in  sex  life  right  and  wrong,  growth 
and  decay,  sacrifice  of  oneself  and  sacri- 
fice of  others  are  more  closely  connected 
with  one  another  than  in  any  other  prov- 
ince of  life;  that  in  sex  life  ''right"  often 
becomes  ''wrong";  that  he  who  sacrifices 
the  other  is  perhaps  secretly  the  victim  of 
his  victim;  that  "passion"  produces  great 
and  beautiful  effects  which  beauty  cannot 
achieve. 

The  one  necessary  thing  is  to  make  ever 
greater  demands  upon  the  men  and  women 
who  take  to  theTUselves  the  right  to  give 
humanity  new  beings. 

In  order  to  make  room  for  these  new 
demands    the    ethical    conception    that 


70  Love  and  Ethics 

makes  the  right  of  parenthood  dependent 
upon  the  present  fixed  forms  of  marriage 
must  fall.  Then,  and  then  only,  will  the 
entire  moral  emphasis  be  laid  upon  the 
physical  and  psychical  character  of  men, 
and  parents  will  become  the  most  impor- 
tant factor  for  the  children  and  the  traits 
they  inherit.  Not  until  the  character  of 
the  child  becomes  the  determining  ele- 
ment in  society's  moral  conceptions  will 
natural  morality  replace  the  morality  op- 
posed to  nature.  Not  that  all  asceticism 
will  become  unnecessary,  but  it  will  not 
be  brought  into  requisition  except  when 
it  serves  the  progress  of  life.  And  not 
that  all  fidelity  must  cease.  Fidelity  will 
become  personal,  husband_and  wife,  like 
tw^  friends,  will  show  consideration,  ten- 
derness,  and-kindness  to  each  other  t^e- 
cause  they  will  know  that  that  is  the  ouly 
way  of  their  preserving  each  other^  love, 
the  only  way  their  love  can  attain  its 
full  stature. 


Love  and  Ethics  71 

The  more  souls  develop  the  more  they 
demand,  not  of  the  strongest  sensual  pas- 
sions, but  of  the  greatest  spiritual  love. 
For  his  own  sake  the  lover  exacts  from 
himself  the  control  of  his  passion  and  for 
his  own  sake  he  guides  his  hand  carefully 
in  the  cultivation  of  all  conditions  neces- 
sary to  a  common  life.  Thus  the  ener- 
gies of  the  soul  are  fveedjrom  within  out- 
wardly. For  we  learn  by  experience 
that  the  more  intimately,  tenderly  and 
completely  we  love  the  more  happiness 
we  possess  and  give  through  our  love. 

The  old  morality  that  still  claims  the 
right  to  be  considered  the  only  real  mo- 
rality is  built  upon  a  conception  of  life 
according  to  which  the  divine  resides  ex- 
clusively in  the  spirit  and  the  will,  not  in 
the  body  and  its  instincts  and  impulses. 
It  is  a  conception  that  must  have  the  sup- 
port of  authority  and  dare  not  rely  upon 
its  own  laws. 

The  new  morality,  on  the  other  hand. 


72  Love  and  Ethics 

does  not  regard  the  spiritual  as  hostile  to 
the  physical,  nor  does  it  call  every  mani- 
festation of  nature  '"divine."  It  sees  in 
the  sensual  and  the  spiritual  the  two  forms 
of  the  divine  and  it  holds  that  the  divine 
reveals  itself  the  more  clearly  the  more 
the  bodily  and  the  spiritual  pervade  each 
other.  The  animal  man  feels  no  contra- 
diction between  the  senses  and  the  spirit. 
The  '' spiritual"  man  seeks  to  rid  himself 
of  the  dualism  he  feels  by  suppressing  the 
sensual.  The  new  morality  aims  to  re- 
move  the  contradiction.  In  love  this  can 
be  done  only  by  means  of  true  love. 
Through  the  lack  or  the  possession  of  this 
sense  of  unity  each  one  is  able  to  see  for 
hiviself  the  value  and  Justification  of  his 
love. 


"V 


IT  is  a  false  accusation,  as  every  one 
who  has  read  ''Love  and  Marriage" 
to  the  end  knows,  that  I  want  to  rob 
society  of  all  forms.  It  is  an  accusation 
always  made  against  those  who  demand 
new  forms.  One  may  doubt  the  psycho- 
logical import  or  the  legal  soundness  of 
the  new  forms  which  I  proposed;  but  no 
one  can  truthfully  maintain  that  I  de- 
manded freedom  alone  without  any  bonds 
whatsoever.  But  my  bonds  are  like  the 
hempen  cords  that  tie  up  a  young  tree, 
not  like  the  iron  hoops  fastened  round  an 
old  tree  to  keep  it  from  falling  apart. 


73 


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